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Saturday, 29 November 2014

Photo-etch - Part 3

One of the advantages (or maybe disadvantages?) of having a blog, is that you can retrace your progress, or lack thereof. Turns out I haven't seen the airbrush in at least 2 months. My head is full of ideas on how to proceed on multiple ongoing projects, but somehow I'm stuck in the idea phase and not actually doing anything. I should add procrastination as a major skill.

I attached the last PE parts that required soldering and am now slowly adding all the minute details with CA glue. I clearly have a misconception on how long it takes for CA glue to cure. "Mere seconds" - as is described on the bottle - should be interpreted as "several minutes". I just made it a new habit to browse the web or catch up on mail and Facebook after attaching a part, so I do not mess things up because it's still wet.

Below the as-good-as-final result, next to the plastic version.

If I say tiny, I mean TINY!

There are 20 large rivets and 60 little ones. They are supposed to go over all the indentations in the larger PE-parts, but I think I'll only place the large ones. (The smalle ones are all on the inside of the ring anyway, so much less visible.

Picking up small PE-parts (or plastic ones for that matter) is a hassle. If you dare to use tweezers, they are bound to fly away, never to be seen again. A wet finger seems to be the general way modellers pick up the tiniest parts, but I wanted to try something else.

I've read about these little sticks with low-tack surface for exactly this purpose, but it seems like a waste of money. I tried making one myself by cutting the point of a cocktail stick and dipping it in Humbrol Maskoll (or any other latex-based product). Repeat after 5 minutes and again and again until it looks like a teardrop. It's tacky enough to pick up small PE parts, but not too much, so you can position the picked up part into a small drop of glue on it's intended destination.